"That doesn"t sound very easy."
"It isn"t."
"If they"re so hard to kill, why aren"t we overrun by them?"
"They aren"t completely invulnerable," William said. "And fire is effective-especially, as I said, when combined with a beheading. Also, there aren"t very many of them-humans outnumber them by a wide margin. And most humans have a natural aversion to them and do tend to attack them-you know, crowds with pitchforks and torches and all that. And they fight amongst themselves a great deal."
"What about-"
"Katie, please," William said. "This conversation is getting a little dark. You won"t need to destroy any of them tonight. This house is safe, and I mean that. You should go inside now. Before your grandmother gets too anxious and runs me off."
I still felt uneasy. "Will you come to see me at school tomorrow? I still have some questions to ask you."
"I will come to see you tomorrow if you will go inside now and stop worrying."
"I"ll go inside now," I said.
William gave me his little half smile. "Then I will see you tomorrow."
As always, I was reluctant to see William go.
I sighed unhappily. "Good night."
"Good night, Katie. And no more thoughts of dark creatures. You can always call me you know." He disappeared into the night.
William wasn"t talking about an ordinary call on a cell phone or a landline-I didn"t actually know if he had either one of those, though presumably he did since he ran a business. The type of call he was talking about was something different-it was an incantation-something he had granted to me that would summon him to me from wherever he was. He could be at my side instantaneously from anywhere in the world.
All I had to do was say the right words, and he would appear.
So I supposed I was safe enough.
I turned and went into the house.
GM met me at the door.
"You were out there with him for quite a long time." GM wasn"t angry, but there was something very stiff about her posture. Her face was carefully blank.
I was a little confused by her manner-she had seemed to warm up to William during dinner.
"Do you like William, GM?"
GM folded her arms. "He seems pleasant enough-it is not a question of liking him."
"But something about him bothers you?"
"I am allowing you to see him, aren"t I?"
"But something does bother you?"
GM shrugged, her arms still crossed. "It"s just that he seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Despite his readiness to answer questions, he remains mysterious. I don"t like that."
GM"s pointed comments from earlier in the evening suddenly came back to me. She had mentioned eloping. She had mentioned living on love and giving up a promising future. I thought of the photo in the living room of a young couple in a bare room with a single flower.
"Did you like my father?" I asked suddenly.
GM blinked at me in surprise. "Your father?"
"You"re wearing that expression," I said. "The expression you wear when you don"t want to discuss the past. Does William remind you of my father?"
GM threw up her hands. "I suppose that"s possible. Your father seemed to come out of nowhere, too. He just appeared in our little town."
"Did you like him?" I asked again.
GM pressed her lips together.
"You should not ask me a question like that."
I felt panic rising within me. "Why not?"
"Oh, Katie, don"t look at me like that. I"m sorry, child. I don"t want you to think I didn"t like your father. I did like him. But I"m not sure I trusted him."
"Why?" I said. "What reason did you have not to trust him?"
"Please do not panic, Solnyshko. Your father was a good man. He meant well. But his head was full of superst.i.tion. Your mother seemed to attract people like that. I think sometimes he might have influenced her the wrong way."
GM reached out and touched a lock of my hair. "Such a pale gold," she murmured. Her eyes roamed over my face, and they tightened at the corners. "You are so like your mother."
"But I"m not my mother," I said quietly. "And William is not my father. He knows all about the superst.i.tions of Krov, and he wants me to stay away from them."
William"s insistence on my staying out of everything was typically something that bothered me, but in this case I knew GM would find it rea.s.suring.
"Well," GM said, looking mollified. "That is certainly a point in his favor."
I felt again for a moment like they were united against me.
GM turned as if she were going to go into the kitchen, and I knew I had to stop her. She was in an unusually talkative mood-perhaps because the evening had been a little unsettling for her. It seemed to have shaken her usual control and left her vulnerable.
"GM," I said quickly, "you said it seemed like my father appeared out of nowhere, but he came from the U.K., didn"t he?"
GM turned back. "Yes, he did."
"Then why did you say he came out of nowhere?"
GM shrugged. "It was never clear to me exactly why he had come to Russia, or how he had found our little town of Krov-it"s an isolated place in many ways. We certainly never received many visitors. He didn"t seem to be there for work or family, and he seemed to have come there specifically to find your mother. It was an unusual situation to say the least."
"I can see now why William reminded you of him," I said. "What explanation did my father give of himself when you first met him?"
"He didn"t give any account of himself when I first met him. He was presented to me as a fait accompli," GM said curtly. "My daughter introduced him to me as her husband."
I was startled. "They were already married when you met him for the first time?"
"Yes," GM said. "They married without telling a single soul beforehand. I never did find out how long they"d known each other before they came to that decision."
I knew now why their wedding photo was so Spartan-apparently my mother, like her mother, was fond of her secrets.
I felt myself growing concerned about the mother I"d barely known. "Did my father have job?" I asked.
"No," GM replied. "But he did seem to have a lot of money. He said he"d inherited it. He never said from whom."
"And my mother didn"t have a job, either?" I said.
"No," GM replied shortly.
"If my father had a lot of money, why did you all live together?" I asked.
"We lived in my house. I insisted on it. To my surprise, they agreed. I don"t know that I could have prevailed upon them if they hadn"t-they were both so willful. But they weren"t interested in a home of their own-or in material goods in general. Their minds were all full of their spiritual quest. They believed they were both put on this earth to fight the powers of darkness."
A note of despair had crept into GM"s voice.
"It was all nonsense, of course," she said. "And they both paid for it in the end."
I looked at GM sharply. "What do you mean?"
GM shrugged-not so much as if she didn"t care, but as if she were pushing away difficult emotions. "Your mother, you know, exacerbated her fever chasing after phantoms. And she didn"t survive."
I nodded. That was the version of the story that GM knew. I knew the reality-that she had been systematically poisoned. But the truth was something that she would never believe.
GM continued and some acidity crept into her tone. "Your father supposedly died in a hiking accident. But your father never had any interest in hiking or any other kind of outdoor sports. I think he was doing something else-chasing after some foolish fantasy. And whenever one of your parents when chasing after a fantasy, they seemed to run afoul of criminals like Gleb Mstislav and others of his ilk. I think your father upset someone he shouldn"t have upset. And then that someone had him killed."
I felt a chill run through my body-a chill that ran so deep it seemed to freeze my heart.
An accident was a terrible thing.
But a murder was even worse.
GM caught sight of my face. "I see I have upset you, Solnyshko. This is exactly why I do not like to talk of the past. Perhaps it is best if we end this conversation."
I felt suddenly as if an important opportunity were about to slip away-that as painful as the topic was, I had to keep GM talking or I would lose the chance to find out something very important.
I felt frozen, though. I couldn"t think of anything to say that would keep GM talking.
As I continued to struggle, GM ran a hand over my hair.
"I am sorry about what I said, Solnyshko. I should not have said those things about your father"s death. It was tragic, but I"m sure it was nothing it shouldn"t have been."
I pushed myself to speak. "No-no-you should say what you think. I don"t want you to keep things from me-even if they"re painful."
GM shook her head. "I spoke out of turn. And speculation about your father"s death will change nothing-he is gone regardless. All this discussion will do is hurt you. I will say nothing more about it."
I tried to think of a way to counter that-to come up with the argument that would change GM"s mind and keep her talking, but I could tell from her expression that the topic was closed.
"Your parents were good people," GM said softly. "Dreamy, yes, but good. I did not mean to say anything that would tarnish their memory."
She smiled sadly. "It must be hard for you-very hard. You barely knew your parents. I am sorry about that, Solnyshko."
GM brushed a hand over my hair once more, and then she left the room.
I had let the moment slip away.
Chapter 6.
The next morning, I was up before my alarm went off.
William had promised to meet me at school, and as far as I was concerned, I couldn"t see him soon enough.
I"d told him I still had questions for him, but that wasn"t really the case. I just wanted to see him, to be rea.s.sured by his presence. And I needed that more now than I had last night when he"d left. GM"s revelation that my father"s death might not have been an accident had left me feeling shaken, and I had pa.s.sed the night in broken dreams.
I needed to see William.
As I quickly got ready for school, I was startled to see a tiny pile of ash on my dresser, just in front of my mirror.
I bent close to it, and even dipped an experimental finger into it, but I couldn"t figure out where the ash had come from. I swept it into a trashcan, and then hurried downstairs.
GM, as usual, had no interest in discussing anything that had happened last night, and I hurried through breakfast.
I left the house as quickly as I could.
The morning was clear and cold, and as I walked, I could see that many of my neighbors had already put their Christmas decorations up. The bright colors, however, did little to lift my spirits.
Despite the warm coat that I wore, I was cold, as if the late fall air had worked its way under my skin and chilled me from the inside out.
I reached the schoolyard and noticed that just one hardy soul was braving the cold out in the open air.
Branden was standing alone by the picnic table he and Charisse had staked out, and he looked up expectantly as I approached.
When he saw who it was, his face fell.
"Oh, hi, Katie," he said.
"Hi, Branden," I replied. "You don"t look very happy to see me."
"Sorry," he said. "I thought you might be Charisse. She said she was going to get here early today, so that we could talk about what we"re going to do for winter break. She isn"t usually late when she says she"ll be early. And she hasn"t called me or sent me a text or anything to let me know where she is."